Return to the Isle of the Lost - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,55
by her side. He dove beneath the waves and hooked his arms underneath hers.
“I’ve got her! I’ve got her!” he yelled, keeping Mal’s head above the water as he kicked his way back to shore, dodging the crocodiles, which were now circling Jay eagerly, entranced by his rhythmic chanting.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock…yeah, that’s right, come on over here. Tick-tock, tick-tock,” said Jay. “Tick-tock, tick-tock!”
Evie pulled her leg back from the edge and ran to help Carlos, and together they hauled Mal back safely on land.
It was late on Sunday when a fairy tapped Ben on the shoulder and told him that Faylinn had asked that he meet her with her team of archivists in the oak tree’s library. Ben had passed the time while waiting by looking over the latest weather reports for the entire kingdom to see if anything had gotten worse. There hadn’t been any new sightings of the purple dragon or snake in the last few hours, but who knew when it would strike next.
He followed the fairy up the winding staircase to a massive library housed in one of the topmost branches of the oak tree. Faylinn was flying in front of a huge projection screen, buzzing quietly with her team. The room was cozy and warm, with a crackling fireplace behind a grate, and long tables with pretty intertwined leaves and branches where the fairies worked.
“Ben, you’re here, good,” she said, flying over to him. “I think we’ve found something.”
She motioned to the images projected on the wall, which showed two blown-up photos of purple scales. Faylinn flew over and motioned to sharp ridges on one of the scales. “Look at this,” she said. “The ridges on your scale are almost identical to the one on the right, even though the one on the right is almost ten times its size. The one on the left is your serpent scale, and the other one is about the size of a dragon scale.”
“A match, then?” he asked.
“We think so. Either there are two different creatures, with identical ridge patterns, or these scales are from one creature that can take two different shapes. We think it is the latter, as it would be nearly impossible to find two creatures with these specific markings,” she said, buzzing between the two photographs.
“Where’s the dragon scale from?” he asked, trying not to show how anxious he was. “Is it Maleficent?”
“Not exactly,” she said, coming over to fly by his shoulder. Her voice was tiny and sharp as a wind chime.
He exhaled. “What does that mean? What’s it from?”
“The scale isn’t from any creature we have in our files. As much as we tried, we couldn’t find a match, actually, until Lexi Rose remembered we’d received something similar not so long ago.” Faylinn clicked to the next slide. “As you know, fairies like to study every aspect of nature, and we ask that if anyone in Auradon discovers something new in the natural world, they send it to us so we can add it to our collection. Recently, a team of dwarfs were digging a new mine down by Faraway Cove, when they came across something unusual.”
The other fairies shifted in their seats and looked uneasy as the slide on the screen showed a group of dwarfs mugging for the camera, their wheelbarrows filled with sparkly diamond rocks. “Look over here,” she said, flying back to the screen and flitting over the cavern floor.
Ben leaned forward and saw that the ground was littered with the same purple scales.
“The dwarfs closed the mining operation soon after. They said they felt the tunnel was haunted even though they never saw anything, but they sensed a strange presence inside it. One of them—I think it was Doc’s nephew—noticed the purple scales and sent a few to the archive.”
“Faraway Cove’s pretty close to Charmington,” said Ben. “And Camelot is directly north of it as well. The dragon must have used these mining tunnels to disappear in and out of sight, which is why Arthur’s men could never catch it. I need to take a team into that mine.”
“The dwarfs sent a map, so you should be able to find the entrance easily enough,” said Faylinn. “I’ll have one copied for you.”
“Hold on, you still haven’t told me—could the scales be Maleficent’s?” he asked.
“I’m sorry to tell you it’s because we don’t know. As it turns out, we don’t have a sample from Maleficent. Prince Philip’s sword was wiped clean after their battle twenty years ago. But if